Millennium 03 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

by Stieg Larsson

  “Indeed?”

  “I feel a great responsibility towards her still, and would value the chance to gauge how much deterioration has occurred over the past ten years.”

  “Deterioration?”

  “Compared with when she was receiving qualified care as a teenager. I thought we might be able to come to an understanding here, as one doctor to another.”

  “While I have it fresh in my mind, perhaps you could help me with a matter I don’t quite understand … as one doctor to another, that is. When she was admitted to Sahlgrenska hospital I performed a comprehensive medical examination on her. A colleague sent for the forensic report on the patient. It was signed by a Dr Jesper H. Löderman.”

  “That’s correct. I was Dr Löderman’s assistant when he was in practice.”

  “I see. But I noticed that the report was vague in the extreme.”

  “Really?”

  “It contains no diagnosis. It almost seems to be an academic study of a patient who refuses to speak.”

  Teleborian laughed. “Yes, she certainly isn’t easy to deal with. As it says in the report, she consistently refused to participate in conversations with Dr Löderman. With the result that he was bound to express himself rather imprecisely. Which was entirely correct on his part.”

  “And yet the recommendation was that she should be institutionalized?”

  “That was based on her prior history. We had experience with her pathology compiled over many years.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t understand. When she was admitted here, we sent for a copy of her file from St Stefan’s. But we still haven’t received it.”

  “I’m sorry about that. But it’s been classified Top Secret by order of the district court.”

  “And how are we supposed to give her the proper care here if we can’t have access to her records? The medical responsibility for her right now is ours, no-one else’s.”

  “I’ve taken care of her since she was twelve, and I don’t think there is any other doctor in Sweden with the same insight into her clinical condition.”

  “Which is what …?”

  “Lisbeth Salander suffers from a serious mental disorder. Psychiatry, as you know, is not an exact science. I would hesitate to confine myself to an exact diagnosis, but she has obvious delusions with distinct paranoid schizophrenic characteristics. Her clinical status also includes periods of manic depression and she lacks empathy.”

  Jonasson looked intently at Dr Teleborian for ten seconds before he said: “I won’t argue a diagnosis with you, Dr Teleborian, but have you ever considered a significantly simpler diagnosis?”

  “Such as?”

  “For example, Asperger’s syndrome. Of course I haven’t done a psychiatric evaluation of her, but if I had spontaneously to hazard a guess, I would consider some form of autism. That would explain her inability to relate to social conventions.”

  “I’m sorry, but Asperger’s patients do not generally set fire to their parents. Believe me, I’ve never met so clearly defined a sociopath.”

  “I consider her to be withdrawn, but not a paranoid sociopath.”

  “She is extremely manipulative,” Teleborian said. “She acts the way she thinks you would expect her to act.”

  Jonasson frowned. Teleborian was contradicting his own reading of Salander. If there was one thing Jonasson felt sure about her, it was that she was certainly not manipulative. On the contrary, she was a person who stubbornly kept her distance from those around her and showed no emotion at all. He tried to reconcile the picture that Teleborian was painting with his own image of Salander.

  “And you have seen her only for a short period when she has been forced to be passive because of her injuries. I have witnessed her violent outbursts and unreasoning hatred. I have spent years trying to help Lisbeth Salander. That’s why I’m here. I propose a co-operation between Sahlgrenska hospital and St Stefan’s.”

  “What sort of co-operation are you talking about?”

  “You’re responsible for her medical condition, and I’m convinced that it’s the best care she could receive. But I’m extremely worried about her mental state, and I would like to be included at an early stage. I’m ready to offer all the help I can.”

  “I see.”

  “So I do need to visit her to do a first-hand evaluation of her condition.”

  “There, unfortunately, I cannot help you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “As I said, she’s under arrest. If you want to initiate any psychiatric treatment of her, you’ll have to apply to Prosecutor Jervas here in Göteborg. She’s the one who makes the decisions on these things. And it would have to be done, I repeat, in co-operation with her lawyer, Annika Giannini. If it’s a matter of a forensic psychiatric report, then the district court would have to issue you a warrant.”

  “It was just that sort of bureaucratic procedure I wanted to avoid.”

  “Understood, but I’m responsible for her, and if she’s going to be taken to court in the near future, we need to have clear documentation of all the measures we have taken. So we’re bound to observe the bureaucratic procedures.”

  “Alright. Then I might as well tell you that I’ve already received a formal commission from Prosecutor Ekström in Stockholm to do a forensic psychiatric report. It will be needed in connection with the trial.”

  “Then you can also obtain formal access to visit her through the appropriate channels without side-stepping regulations.”

  “But while we’re going backwards and forwards with bureaucracy, there is a risk that her condition may continue to deteriorate. I’m only interested in her wellbeing.”

  “And so am I,” Jonasson said. “And between us, I can tell you that I see no sign of mental illness. She has been badly treated and is under a lot of pressure. But I see no evidence whatsoever that she is schizophrenic or suffering from paranoid delusions.”

  When at long last he realized that it was fruitless trying to persuade Jonasson to change his mind, Teleborian got up abruptly and took his leave.

  Jonasson sat for a while, staring at the chair Teleborian had been sitting in. It was not unusual for other doctors to contact him with advice or opinions on treatment. But that usually happened only with patients whose doctors were already managing their treatment. He had never before seen a psychiatrist land like a flying saucer and more or less demand to be given access to a patient, ignoring all the protocols, and a patient, at that, whom he obviously had not been treating for several years. After a while Jonasson glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost 7.00. He picked up the telephone and called Martina Karlgren, the psychologist at Sahlgrenska who had been made available to trauma patients.

  “Hello. I’m assuming you’ve already left for the day. Am I disturbing you?”

  “No problem. I’m at home, but just pottering.”

  “I’m curious about something. You’ve spoken to our notorious patient, Lisbeth Salander. Could you give me your impression of her?”

  “Well, I’ve visited her three times and offered to talk with her. Every time she declined in a friendly but firm way.”

  “What’s your impression of her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Martina, I know that you’re not a psychiatrist, but you’re an intelligent and sensible person. What general impression did you get of her nature, her state of mind?”

  After a while Karlgren said: “I’m not sure how I should answer that question. I saw her twice soon after she was admitted, but she was in such wretched shape that I didn’t make any real contact with her. Then I visited her about a week ago, at the request of Helena Endrin.”

  “Why did Helena ask you to visit her?”

  “Salander is starting to recover. She mainly just lies there staring at the ceiling. Dr Endrin wanted me to look in on her.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I introduced myself. We chatted for a couple of minutes. I asked how she was feeling and whe
ther she felt the need to have someone to talk to. She said that she didn’t. I asked if I could help her with anything. She asked me to smuggle in a pack of cigarettes.”

  “Was she angry, or hostile?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. She was calm, but she kept her distance. I considered her request for cigarettes more of a joke than a serious need. I asked if she wanted something to read, whether I could bring her books of any sort. At first she said no, but later she asked if I had any scientific journals that dealt with genetics and brain research.”

  “With what?”

  “Genetics.”

  “Genetics?”

  “Yes. I told her that there were some popular science books on the subject in our library. She wasn’t interested in those. She said she’d read books on the subject before, and she named some standard works that I’d never heard of. She was more interested in pure research in the field.”

  “Good grief.”

  “I said that we probably didn’t have any more advanced books in the patient library – we have more Philip Marlowe than scientific literature – but that I’d see what I could dig up.”

  “And did you?”

  “I went upstairs and borrowed some copies of Nature magazine and The New England Journal of Medicine. She was pleased and thanked me for taking the trouble.”

  “But those journals contain mostly scholarly papers and pure research.”

  “She reads them with obvious interest.”

  Jonasson sat speechless for a moment.

  “And how would you rate her mental state?”

  “Withdrawn. She hasn’t discussed anything of a personal nature with me.”

  “Do you have the sense that she’s mentally ill? Manic depressive or paranoid?”

  “No, no, not at all. If I thought that, I’d have sounded the alarm. She’s strange, no doubt about it, and she has big problems and is under stress. But she’s calm and matter-of-fact and seems to be able to cope with her situation. Why do you ask? Has something happened?”

  “No, nothing’s happened. I’m just trying to take stock of her.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Saturday, 7.v – Thursday, 12.v

  Blomkvist put his laptop case on the desk. It contained the findings of Olsson, the stringer in Göteborg. He watched the flow of people on Götgatan. That was one of the things he liked best about his office. Götgatan was full of life at all hours of the day and night, and when he sat by the window he never felt isolated, never alone.

  He was under great pressure. He had kept working on the articles that were to go into the summer issue, but he had finally realized that there was so much material that not even an issue devoted entirely to the topic would be sufficient. He had ended up in the same situation as during the Wennerström affair, and he had again decided to publish all the articles as a book. He had enough text already for 150 pages, and he reckoned that the final book would run to 320 or 336 pages.

  The easy part was done. He had written about the murders of Svensson and Johansson and described how he happened to be the one who came upon the scene. He had dealt with why Salander had become a suspect. He spent a chapter debunking first what the press had written about Salander, then what Prosecutor Ekström had claimed, and thereby indirectly the entire police investigation. After long deliberation he had toned down his criticism of Bublanski and his team. He did this after studying a video from Ekström’s press conference, in which it was clear that Bublanski was uncomfortable in the extreme and obviously annoyed at Ekström’s rapid conclusions.

  After the introductory drama, he had gone back in time and described Zalachenko’s arrival in Sweden, Salander’s childhood, and the events that led to her being locked away in St Stefan’s in Uppsala. He was careful to annihilate both Teleborian and the now dead Björck. He rehearsed the psychiatric report of 1991 and explained why Salander had become a threat to certain unknown civil servants who had taken it upon themselves to protect the Russian defector. He quoted from the correspondence between Teleborian and Björck.

  He then described Zalachenko’s new identity and his criminal operations. He described his assistant Niedermann, the kidnapping of Miriam Wu, and Paolo Roberto’s intervention. Finally, he summed up the dénouement in Gosseberga which led to Salander being shot and buried alive, and explained how a policeman’s death was a needless catastrophe because Niedermann had already been shackled.

  Thereafter the story became more sluggish. Blomkvist’s problem was that the account still had gaping holes in it. Björck had not acted alone. Behind this chain of events there had to be a larger group with resources and political influence. Anything else did not make sense. But he had eventually come to the conclusion that the unlawful treatment of Salander would not have been sanctioned by the government or the bosses of the Security Police. Behind this conclusion lay no exaggerated trust in government, but rather his faith in human nature. An operation of that type could never have been kept secret if it were politically motivated. Someone would have called in a favour and got someone to talk, and the press would have uncovered the Salander affair several years earlier.

  He thought of the Zalachenko club as small and anonymous. He could not identify any one of them, except possibly Mårtensson, a policeman with a secret appointment who devoted himself to shadowing the publisher of Millennium.

  It was now clear that Salander would definitely go to trial.

  Ekström had brought a charge for grievous bodily harm in the case of Magge Lundin, and grievous bodily harm or attempted murder in the case of Karl Axel Bodin.

  No date had yet been set, but his colleagues had learned that Ekström was planning for a trial in July, depending on the state of Salander’s health. Blomkvist understood the reasoning. A trial during the peak holiday season would attract less attention than one at any other time of the year.

  Blomkvist’s plan was to have the book printed and ready to distribute on the first day of the trial. He and Malm had thought of a paperback edition, shrink-wrapped and sent out with the special summer issue. Various assignments had been given to Cortez and Eriksson, who were to produce articles on the history of the Security Police, the IB affair,* and the like.

  He frowned as he stared out of the window.

  It’s not over. The conspiracy is continuing. It’s the only way to explain the tapped telephones, the attack on Annika, and the double theft of the Salander report. Perhaps the murder of Zalachenko is a part of it too.

  But he had no evidence.

  Together with Eriksson and Malm, he had decided that Millennium Publishing would publish Svensson’s text about sex trafficking, also to coincide with the trial. It was better to present the package all at once, and besides, there was no reason to delay publication. On the contrary – the book would never be able to attract the same attention at any other time. Eriksson was Blomkvist’s principal assistant for the Salander book. Karim and Malm (against his will) had thus become temporary assistant editors at Millennium, with Nilsson as the only available reporter. One result of this increased workload was that Eriksson had had to contract several freelancers to produce articles for future issues. It was expensive, but they had no choice.

  Blomkvist wrote a note on a yellow Post-it, reminding himself to discuss the rights to the book with Svensson’s family. His parents lived in Örebro and they were his sole heirs. He did not really need permission to publish the book in Svensson’s name, but he wanted to go and see them to get their approval. He had postponed the visit because he had had too much to do, but now it was time to take care of the matter.

  Then there were a hundred other details. Some of them concerned how he should present Salander in the articles. To make the ultimate decision he needed to have a personal conversation with her to get her approval to tell the truth, or at least parts of it. And he could not have that conversation because she was under arrest and no visitors were allowed.

  In that respect, his sister was no help either. Slavishly she followed the regu
lations and had no intention of acting as Blomkvist’s go-between. Nor did Giannini tell him anything of what she and her client discussed, other than the parts that concerned the conspiracy against her – Giannini needed help with those. It was frustrating, but all very correct. Consequently Blomkvist had no clue whether Salander had revealed that her previous guardian had raped her, or that she had taken revenge by tattooing a shocking message on his stomach. As long as Giannini did not mention the matter, neither could he.

  But Salander’s being isolated presented one other acute problem. She was a computer expert, also a hacker, which Blomkvist knew but Giannini did not. Blomkvist had promised Salander that he would never reveal her secret, and he had kept his promise. But now he had a great need for her skills in that field.

  Somehow he had to establish contact with her.

  He sighed as he opened Olsson’s folder again. There was a photocopy of a passport application form for one Idris Ghidi, born 1950. A man with a moustache, olive skin and black hair going grey at the temples.

  He was Kurdish, a refugee from Iraq. Olsson had dug up much more on Ghidi than on any other hospital worker. Ghidi had apparently aroused media attention for a time, and appeared in several articles.

  Born in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, he graduated as an engineer and had been part of the “great economic leap forward” in the ’70s. In 1984 he was a teacher at the College of Construction Technology in Mosul. He had not been known as a political activist, but he was a Kurd, and so a potential criminal in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In 1987 Ghidi’s father was arrested on suspicion of being a Kurdish militant. No elaboration was forthcoming. He was executed in January 1988. Two months later Idris Ghidi was seized by the Iraqi secret police, taken to a prison outside Mosul, and tortured there for eleven months to make him confess. What he was expected to confess, Ghidi never discovered, so the torture continued.

  In March 1989, one of Ghidi’s uncles paid the equivalent of 50,000 Swedish kronor, to the local leader of the Ba’ath Party, as compensation for the injury Ghidi had caused the Iraqi state. Two days later he was released into his uncle’s custody. He weighed thirty-nine kilos and was unable to walk. Before his release, his left hip was smashed with a sledgehammer to discourage any mischief in the future.